You know what extra would get me to plunk down $200 for this set? An option to watch all the mimed and actual filmed performances, complete, in a row.
At that time, GH was on channel 6 in Philly, which you could pick up on the FM dial - so my younger sisters insisted I play it when I drove us home from school each day, and I got hooked.
This is the sort of info we should be getting if some live footage is a possibility - even if it's silent. never-before-seen outtakes is rather vague. As this is obviously aimed at fans (especially since it's only available at monkees.com), including more detailed info would make me jump on board right now. (Heck even a mock up of the packaging would be helpful.) Possibly not, but I'd think outtakes/other footage would have been found when doing the Criterion version. That was 5 years ago.
On the DVDs, you could choose to just play the songs. I've never done it, but I'd imagine they wouldn't (couldn't) be super clean edits on some of them with the previous or next scenes overlapping some of the "performance." They probably just jump to the chapter stops.
1 or 2 songs per episodes over 8 discs with is a pain to watch. We can't just get a bonus feature to turn on and watch?
A lot of members here have wished for a blu-ray release of "The Monkees" television series, but I didn't expect it to ever happen. However, as with all other things Monkee, Rhino is putting it out. I'll get it, but audio is amlost always more important to me than video.
There's one scene that's really hilarious (unsure which episode), where Davy and Peter are improvising a new song. Davy starts going "Da da da da" and Mickey cuts him off and announces that's it's terrible and the worst thing he's ever heard. You could tell the writers of the show loved taking the p*ss out of the characters and the show itself whenever the opportunity presented itself.
That's from one of the final episodes, "The Monkees Mind Their Manor" (IIRC), directed by Peter Tork. And an audio clip of that moment ended up on a bootleg called Monkeeshines, where they identified it as an "unreleased song" called "Iranian Tango," credited to Tork/Jones! That may actually have been an ad-lib? (It was also on some other bootleg under the title "Davy's 2nd Song.") Speaking of that episode, the DVD set has audio commentary by Peter Tork where he refers to Michael Nesmith as "a contrary SOB"
Why does Peter have to look like a non musician when playing keyboards on I'm a believer? I'm referring to the clip at the end of one of the episodes where they are playing this and he looks like he doesn't know keyboards and is faking his way, moving his hands around like a, well like a faker. Even on the Words sequence and other songs he just doesn't look like a musician, like he knows how to play these instruments. What was the deal?? Signed, befuddled
Perhaps it was his little "commentary" on being a musician in a prefab TV rock group with songs that were basically performed by studio musicians? Or he was just goofing.
I think he looks like he is playing it, last I remember...he still looks like he knows what he's doing, though it's been a while since i saw it
